


House of Memories

by purpleeyesandbowties



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, box 953, but that's not all, wolf 359 secret santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 00:50:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8776570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purpleeyesandbowties/pseuds/purpleeyesandbowties
Summary: Box 953 wasn't the box Doug should have been concerned with.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the 2016 Wolf 359 secret santa! My person was @originalsquidney on tumblr, and the prompt was 'a situation involving that storage area Doug found in episode 8' I took that and ran with it lol. I hope you like it!

Doug had a rare night off. Since the USS Horrible Unending Nightmare, he’d tried to take as many shifts as he could, just to keep himself busy. His head was far too loud otherwise. And right now, laying on his bunk with his hands pillowed behind his head, that’s exactly what it was. Selfishly, he’d been hoping that there’d be some station-wide emergency or crew meeting or….anything, anything at all to distract him. He’d wasted a good hour laying around, trying to sleep and wishing something would happen. Finally, he gave up and sat up.

“Hey, Hera?” he said to the otherwise empty room.

“What is it, Officer Eiffel?”

“Do you have time to talk?” 

There was a pause that Doug hoped was amused rather than annoyed.

“Sure, Officer Eiffel,” Hera finally replied. Doug smiled at the fond note in her voice, glad he hadn’t guessed wrong.

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I know you have a lot to concentrate on, like, all the time. Sorry.” 

He had been trying to give Hera more choice in doing things, now. He’d seen all too clearly what happened when her crew expected her to handle everything at once. She wasn’t human, but she also wasn’t _superhuman_.

“No, it’s fine. Nothing’s going horribly wrong at the moment, so I’m good to talk. What’s on your mind?”

Doug sighed and stretched out again. A lot. There was a lot on his mind, but most of it didn’t make for pleasant conversation.

“I don’t know. I was thinking about…”

He cast about for a topic, finally landing on one he hadn’t thought about in a while. “I was thinking about that damn box in the storage room. You know, the one that was reserved for me? It’s always bugged me, not knowing what was in it.”

Hera made a noise of agreement. “ _That_ was a weird day.”

“God, remember when Minkowski getting drunk off Hilbert’s accidental booze was ‘weird’ for us?”

Doug winced. Nope, not going down that path today. Keep talking. “But yeah, it always bothered me. Even now, it’s driving me crazy! What do you think was in it?”

“Oh…I don’t know. I never put much thought into it. I could check the storage manifest again? I’ve been finding all kinds of things that I didn’t have access to before, since Dr. Maxwell….anyway, I could double check. See if I can get through this time?”

Doug frowned a little. It kind of bugged him that Hera was still refusing to tell him what had went down that day—that extremely long, scary day—when Maxwell was do-or-die-ing Hera’s brain. But he knew there were things about himself he didn’t really want to spill to her, so he shrugged it off.

“Yeah, that sounds good. Lemme know what you find.”

They both retreated into silence for a few minutes. Doug was almost thinking about drifting off to sleep after all when Hera made a small hum.

“Hmm?” Doug repeated. He cracked an eye open. “Hmm, what?”

“It’s….huh. Hold on, there’s a….I think I can crack it. Give me a second,” she said. She muttered quietly to herself. Doug managed to catch a few phrases: ‘come here you little…..oh, that’s weird—I wonder if….”

“Hera?” he said cautiously. “If you can’t, ya know, find it or whatever, that’s fine, I just—”

“Oh!” Hera exclaimed. “I got it!”

“Really?” 

Doug grinned, floating over to give a congratulatory pat on the camera in the corner of the room. “Score one for Hera! Lay it on me, baby!”

“Okay,” Hera said. “First things first: bad news. I still wasn’t able to access the file about Box 953.”

“Oh.” Doug deflated a bit. He folded his legs under him, sitting cross-legged a few feet off the floor. “So, is there good news?”

“Yes, actually. I was going through the cargo manifest—a more detailed one than the one in the storage room itself—and the description for Box 953 has this code lock on it that I can’t crack. It was only a few lines, though, I could tell, and most of these boxes have _paragraphs_. So that’s weird…”

“Um, you said something about good news?” Doug prompted after Hera had trailed off.

“I’m getting there, Officer Eiffel. So 953 was locked, but I was looking at some other ones. Well, one in particular: Box 012. It had your name on it, same as 953: reserved for Douglas Eiffel. There was also a code lock on it, but I managed to sneak through it and I’m looking through it now and—”

Abruptly, Hera’s voice cut off. Doug raised an eyebrow. “Hera? Are you okay?”

“Hmm,” Hera said. “You know what, Officer Eiffel, I _just_ remembered that I was going to…um…reroute a system to another system and that’s gonna take a lot of energy, so I should probably…”

Doug felt something like dread seep into his stomach. “Hera. What’s in the box?”

“It’s not important,” Hera insisted. Doug gritted his teeth. Hera couldn’t lie, but that didn’t mean she didn’t try her best to find ways around it when she thought it was necessary. Like now, apparently.

“What’s in the box, Hera?”

“Um….well, it’s…..Officer Eiffel, this is one of the times that you should just believe me when I say….let it go.”

“Hera.”

“Let it go, Officer Eiffel. Please. Walk away.”

_“_ Like hell I am! Hera, what’s in the box? _”_

“I’m serious, Officer Eiffel.”

_“So am I.”_

There was a long moment of silence. Finally, Hera said, “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though. Box 012 contains a number of items from Earth, collected by.…Anne Garcia.”

Doug’s stomach dropped. “What.”

“I told you,” Hera answered tiredly.

“Is it—I mean—not all of the boxes fell out of the storage room that day. Me and Minkowski managed to save a few of them. Did—did that box make it out?”

“I don’t know.” Hera sighed. “You’d have to go check the storage room. But I’m not sure that’s the best idea, Officer Eiffel—”

Doug, already halfway down the corridor, didn’t answer.

—

Doug raced to the broom closet—the brig, he reminded himself with a sarcastic little chuckle. That’s where he and Minkowski had stored the boxes that hadn’t _fallen_ into deep space. He’d been so pissed off about losing Box 953 that it didn’t even occur to him to think about what the other boxes contained, and Minkowski was grumpy enough about blowing a hole in her ship that she didn’t check, either. Doug threw open the door, heading straight for the sad-looking pile of boxes and crates in the back corner. There were maybe twelve or fifteen in total. Doug searched through them hurriedly, hardly daring to hope. There were hundreds of boxes in that storage unit—the chances that number 012 had survived were slim, he reminded himself. Just as he was about give up, he noticed a small, battered cardboard box shoved in the corner. And just like that, he was holding a box that traveled seven light years to get there, spent three years in storage, and almost fell into oblivion before it got to him. He took a deep breath and opened it.

The first thing in the box was a loose sheet of paper with a few lines of text printed on it.

“Box 012. Care of M. Cutter. Reserved for D. Eiffel. Open only in event of Protocol Steel-Vector-Seven,” Doug read aloud. There was nothing more on it, so he cast it aside. 

The first item in the box was a small backpack, light blue and patterned with clouds.

Doug smiled, remembering how excited Anne was for the first day of school, packing up this backpack with all her new notebooks and pencil bag and floppy kids’ books, and how she came back that afternoon, dragging her backpack behind her and complaining dramatically about how much work they had to do, and how hard it was to _sit down_ for so long. 

He stared at the backpack for a few seconds, lost in thought, before shaking himself out of it and pulling the zipper open.

Inside the backpack, there were two brightly colored notebooks, the pages covered in glitter-pen drawings. Anne had always been the artist of the family. Doug could have wallpapered the walls of his shitty apartment with her drawings, back before everything went to hell. Since then, he’d missed being able to look up from whatever he was doing to see his daughter’s drawings. Proof of her love for him, proof of her existence in his life.

He clutched the notebooks to his chest, swallowing hard. Carefully, he placed the notebooks back into the backpack and zipped it shut. He shouldered the backpack for safekeeping, and reached into the box again. This time, he pulled out a blanket. It was small, light brown, patterned with monkeys and bananas. As he held it up, he caught a whiff of detergent on the fabric. He saw—

_Anne, just a baby, swaddled in a blanket. Monkeys dance and play across the fabric. Doug had picked it out—before they knew if the baby would be an Anne or a Carson, and he wasn’t about to buy the standard pink-or-blue blanket anyway, not for_ his _kid._

_Anne on her first birthday, sucking stubbornly on the corner of the blanket as she tore into presents and smashed her little fists into the special cake they’d gotten her._

_Anne toddling around the house, her blanket-cape trailing on the floor behind her. A paper crown Doug had made her sitting proudly on her head, declaring her Empresses Anne._

_Anne wrapping herself up in the blanket during a thunderstorm. Crawling into Doug’s lap, her tiny voice wracked with fear. Falling asleep in his lap, still clutching the blanket like it could protect her against the storm outside. Doug rocks her back and forth, silently promising to keep her safer than any blanket could._

_Doug picking Anne up, throwing her in the air, catching her while she laughs wildly (‘Again, Daddy! Again, again!’) secure in the knowledge he would catch her. He drops her gently onto the monkey blanket spread across the floor, gathers the corners, and picks her up in a bundle. She laugh-shrieks, “Don’t throw me away, Daddy!” A familiar part of the game. Doug gets as far as the front door, loudly musing about the dumpster man’s pick-up schedule before he breaks into laughter and sets her down._

_“I wasn’t gonna throw you away, little monkey. You’re too precious for that.”_

_“I know, Daddy,” she answers, still breathless with giggles._

 

The blanket dropped into his lap, held loosely in his hands. Carefully, he folded it in a tidy rectangle and tucked it into the backpack. He pulled more items from the cardboard box, each one bringing with it a flood of memories. A glittery purple heart-shaped locket, filled with lip gloss—the only makeup a six-year-old cared about. A green and pink teddy bear pink with a torn ear—Katie had picked out that bear for Anne’s second birthday. Anne had named her Candy, because the pink and green stripes looked like the candy cane she’d been eating. The ear had torn because Anne had a habit of chewing on it when she was nervous. A half-used pack of glittery pens, all of Anne’s favorite colors.

And finally, at the bottom of the box, a letter, written in green pen. Doug paused. Until now, he felt like he was in a daze, the memories more sweet than bitter. He felt like he was floating, buoyed up by the reminders of better days, when everything was simple. When Anne loved him and trusted him. When he trusted himself. The single sheet of paper he held could break that beautiful house of memories apart, tarnish it forever, and leave him with nothing but a boxful of painful reminders and the weight of regret pressing on his chest.

He unfolded it before he could lose his nerve.

 

_Dear Dad,_

_They don’t tell me much at this new hospital, but they told me that you’re going far away. I don’t know exactly how far you’re going, but they said you’d probably never be back. I don’t know how I feel about that._

_I know you’re gonna get lonely, wherever you’re going. Mom told me that once. You need to be needed. I think I know how that feels._

_Dad, I don’t know how to feel about you. I’m mad, but I don’t think I can stay mad at you for the rest of my life. If you’re really leaving forever, I want to say goodbye. But you’re not allowed to visit me anymore. That’s why I’m writing this letter. So…..goodbye, I guess. I packed some stuff for you to remember me by. Ms. Pryce, my new social worker, said that you have plenty of room for stuff, and I’m not allowed to have a lot here. She says it’s bad to keep things with bad memories attached._

_I think maybe that if you come back someday, those memories won’t be bad anymore. So take good care of my stuff. I might want it back. Don’t forget me._

_Anne_

_(P.S. I love you, Dad. Even if it’s not true now, I want to say it, in case you don’t come back after all)._

 

How old had she been when she wrote this? Nine? Ten? Doug didn’t bother keeping track of the days when he was in prison, and he knew there had been a gap of at least a year between Cutter’s initial visit and the day he left Earth behind. How long had it been since he’d seen his baby girl? How old was she now? How much of her life had he missed? God, how did he think, even for a second, that he’d be okay without her in his life?

Doug closed his eyes, letting the tears come. He hadn’t cried about Anne in years. It was easier to push it back, push it away, try to forget. But Anne felt closer to him now than she had been on Earth, when prison walls and too much guilt separated them. So he let himself cry. He gave himself five minutes, ten, twenty, to cry for his daughter, and for himself, until no more tears would come.

When he was done, feeling wrung out and empty but oddly comforted, Doug refolded the letter and placed it back in its envelope. He unbuttoned his shirt and tucked it securely in the inside pocket of his jumpsuit, where it would rest against his heart. He opened the backpack again, took out the plastic purple locket and tied the cord around his neck. It floated up, untethered by gravity, so he tucked it under the neckline of his jumpsuit. Her other things were too cumbersome to carry with him. But the cheap little lip gloss locket and the letter stayed with him. They were a reminder that Anne was a part of his life. He wasn’t going to push away or try to forget her anymore. He loved his daughter. He wanted to her back again.

He took the box containing the backpack, the blanket, the pens, and the teddy bear back to his room and locked them securely in the storage bin. To keep them safe. For Anne. She would want them back soon, after all. 

—

That night, Doug wrote a letter of his own.

 

_Dear Anne,_

_I don’t know when this will get to you, or if it will at all. I’ll try to keep this short: I got the things you packed up for me. Thank you, sweetheart. You know no idea how much they mean to me. I’ll do my best to keep them safe and sound. I know Candy misses you almost as much as I do._

_Anne, I messed up. Big time. I hurt you. And I’m sorry. Baby girl, there are no words to tell you how sorry I am. There’s no words to tell you how much I wish I could go back and change what I did. But I can’t go back, no matter how much time I spent telling myself the past is in the past. No matter how often iI told myself I could go on with the rest of my life. But now all that’s left to do is go forward. I want a future, Anne, for the first time in a long time. I want a future back on Earthwith you, if you’ll agree to be my daughter again. I’m keeping your stuff safe until I see youagain._

_I could never forget you, sunshine. I love you._

_Dad_

 

**Epilogue:**

Doug stood outside the door, nervously fiddling with the letter in his hands. Anne G, the door said, in a small, private boarding school for the Deaf in Chicago. He’d knocked on the door, felt stupid, and pressed the doorbell. The doorbell flashed a light at the top of the door that Doug assumed was mirrored in the room itself. He shifted from foot to foot, wanting very much to bolt for the exit. The sweat from his fingers was crinkling the letter, so he stuck it in his pocket again. He wiped his hands on his pants, trying his best to steady his breathing. The door opened.

Heart pounding in his ears, he raised his shaky hands and very carefully signed.

_Hi Anne. I am dad. I love you._

Anne, more beautiful than he even remembered, studied him with uncertain eyes. She bit her lip. Doug signed one more carefully practiced phrase.

_I am sorry._

He held out the letter for her to take, but it was knocked out of his hand as Anne launched herself at him. She hugged him hard enough to squeeze the breath out of him. Breathless, Doug wrapped his arms around her, and felt his tears dampening her hair. He hoped she’d forgive him for that, too. Eventually, she pulled back and Doug swiped at his eyes so he could watch her hands, suddenly grateful for the months between his landing on earth and when he was allowed to see her, so he could study American Sign Language. He’d never been a stellar student of anything, but he had never tried harder at anything else before. So he understood the words her hands spelled out for him.

_Welcome back, Dad._

**Author's Note:**

> fun fact, i took the blanket game and purple locket straight from my own childhood, so know that. i'm sadhipstercat on tumblr, come talk with me!


End file.
